Book Suggestions
I often get asked what books I recommend for learning or mastering (X)HTML, CSS, PHP, AJAX, etc, and I’m always at a loss of what to tell people. See, I’ve never specifically went out and bought a book for any of that. Everything I’ve learned over the years has been through experimentation, viewing examples, tearing down other people’s pages to see how they got things to work, and lots of reading, on the web.
I’m not sure it’s necessary to ever buy a book to learn web design and development, but I suppose it depends on how you learn. I think there are more than enough online resources to get anyone interested started in any web language. And there are even more tutorials and walkthroughs for the more advanced.
But, because I’ve been asked the question so much, I’ve decided to compile a list of sources I would recommend, both in print and online.
Markup
- HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition (Visual Quickstart Guide)
- Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML
- Learning Web Design: A Beginner’s Guide to (X)HTML, StyleSheets, and Web Graphics
CSS
General and Usability
Tutorial Links
- Tizag.com – Great reference for beginning HTML, CSS, PHP, Ajax, PHP, MySQL and more
- HTML Dog – HTML and CSS tutorials from beginner to advanced
- W3schools.com – Full tutorials on just about every language
- W3c.org – World Wide Web Consortium
Inspiration
- Smashing Magazine (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/)
- Web Resources Depot (http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/)
- Net Tuts+ (http://net.tutsplus.com/)
Industry Leaders
- A List Apart (http://www.alistapart.com/)
- Jeffery Zeldman (http://www.zeldman.com/)
- Cameron Moll (http://www.cameronmoll.com/)
- Veerle Pieters (http://veerle.duoh.com/)
- Andy Rutledge (http://www.andyrutledge.com/)